The Bridge Red alternative gallery continues to live up to its mission, and its 2011 Knight Arts Challenge grant, which supports that to “provide a space for exhibition, documentation and creative exchange of works and ideas by strong and developed local artists who do not get the exposure their work merits.” The latest example is “Sherri Tan: A 20-Year Survey,” a solo show of a respected artist who hasn’t shown much around  the last decade. In fact, anyone “coming of artistic age” during the era of Art Basel Miami Beach may well be unaware of her eclectic works at all. Bridge Red would like to rectify that.

First to the work being shown, most of it sculpture and collage: it will likely not resemble much else you’ve seen in Miami. For most of these works, she has assembled found objects — or bits and pieces of them, for instance the head of a hammer, a segment of a chain, a section of a window — paper, marble and a lot of Baroque picture frames into tableaux heavy with Renaissance or Classical imagery, evoked by a broken bust of an imitation Greek sculpture, maroon velvet, a violin, a collage with Ionic columns. To get the idea, one work called “The E-cho Fugue” is comprised of frames, chessboard, insects, photograph, wax, violin, bow and music box.

It is the painting frames that jump out most vividly in this upstairs gallery in North Miami, as they literally do jump out. Tan manipulated and shaped these found objects, once essential to what was considered one of the only true forms of visual art, so that from a frontal perspective, they look like frames usually do, hung flat on the wall. But move slightly to the side, left or right, and the frames are shown to be bent, crooked, anything but straight. Some of Tan’s works also incorporate detailed black-and-white text, from newspapers or books, in several languages. That’s why some of the elaborate text-infused work can be found with Miami collectors Ruth and Marvin Sackner, whose Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry is internationally known and unique. She can be found in a number of other collections across the country and has been exhibited widely, from Milwaukee to the Bass, almost all before 2001. As will not come as a surprise when taking in her work, she has other talents as well. She’s made sets for operas; is a professional painting conservator; and has taught at University of Miami and New World School of the Arts.

So although some would say it’s because Miami has an aversion in general to showing established artists’ work, with emphasis on the emerging, why haven’t we seen much of her stuff since 2001? Tan says she did one of those crazy things that humans do and took time off from the business of art to the business of tending a family. With her daughter running around the gallery on opening day, no longer a toddler, Tan is returning. This solo outing could be considered her coming (back) out party. Very nice to see.

“Sherri Tan: A 20-Year Survey” runs through March 25, with a Sunday closing brunch, at Bridge Red Studios/Project Space, 12425 N.E. 13th Ave., #5; by appointment, 786-390-8915.